Robin Cox – 12/29/06

This page was last updated on January 3, 2007.

Don’t buy warming scam; Robin Cox; Beaver County Times; December 29, 2006.

I don’t usually have a problem with how the Times entitles my letters, but this is not a title I would have picked. I don’t know if the idea man is contributing to global warming is a scam or not. I merely pointed out PennEnvironment included no evidence in its letter and then I provided reasons for why I’m skeptical.

Below is a copy of the letter as I submitted it.

Title: Pay your way

I have some comments about the letter from the special interest group PennEnvironment (“Fund mass transit adequately,” December 21^st).

First, the letter provides no evidence to support the assertion that manmade global warming – if it exists – contributes significantly to global warming. It wasn’t that long ago we were told air pollution caused global cooling.

The Earth has always gone through warming and cooling cycles.

A first millennia AD warming period allowed the Vikings to inhabit and farm Greenland. The second millennia “Little Ice Age” forced the Vikings back out.

Second, the people who 30 years ago sounded the manmade global cooling alarm almost overnight switched to manmade global warming. During the mid-1970s, publications like Newsweek, Science Digest, The Christian Science Monitor, and Time published articles about the impending “ice age.” CNN did an ice age piece as recently as the early 1990s.

Third, I become skeptical when people try to sell their manmade global warming position using emotion and hysteria.

Fourth, I become even more skeptical when U.S. senators threaten businesses that don’t agree with them about alleged manmade global warming.

Fifth, the letter stated, “Pennsylvania’s public transportation systems are in jeopardy because of considerable funding shortfalls from Harrisburg.” Not true. These government-run businesses are “in jeopardy” even with their current subsidies because they don’t provide their service at a price consumers are willing to pay.

I have a recommended “dedicated funding source for the state’s public transportation systems” and I believe every bus already has one. It’s called the fare box.

If the people who use mass transit won’t pay for it, why should the rest of us have our paychecks and pension checks looted?

There’s nothing pro-environment about throwing taxpayer dollars at failing businesses.